Charles Merrill Won’t Pay Tax Until Same-Sex Marriage Legal

Back in
2006 I briefly mentioned the case of Charles Merrill. He decided to
stop filing his income tax returns because the federal government refused to
let him and his husband file jointly — refused, in other words, to recognize
their marriage for the purpose of filing taxes.

Tuesday, I went down to San Francisco’s main library branch to look into some
microfilm & microfiche that had come in from interlibrary loan concerning
my recent obsession with early American Quaker war tax resistance. Before and
after my research, I stopped by City Hall to watch the celebrations taking
place there during the first day on which gay couples could get
bona fide marriage licenses in California. There was a party
atmosphere on the steps, as two-by-two, couples would emerge with a
certificate of marriage and everyone would stop to applaud.

The Internal Revenue Service has finally caught up with Charles Merrill and
he may face three years in prison for not filing income taxes
since 2004. The penalty for not filing for
each year is 3 years in jail or a $25,000.00 fine.

Merrill said from his Waldorf Astoria suite in New York, “Marriage between
‘gender neutral’ couples is legal in California, but our union is not
recognized by the Federal Government and we don’t get the over 1,000 Federal
benefits automatically extended to heterosexual couples. This inequality,
thanks to the Defense of Marriage Act, was voted on
by Congress and signed into law by President Clinton. What a can of worms
that has turned out to be… President Bush believing in and talking to an
imaginary sky god and wanting to make an amendment to our Constitution that
would ban two people in love from getting married. The Government has no
business in checking out the gender of two people who want to be married.
Presidential Candidate John McCain was living in adultery with his present
wife Cindy while still married to his former wife. According to the Bible, he
should have been stoned to death for adultery.”

Merrill continued, “Since our marriage is not recognized by the Federal
Government, the carving over the Supreme Court of the United States is just
meaningless words, the words that say, ‘Equal Justice Under The Law.’”

Merrill’s trial is scheduled for November 17,
2008 at the
U.S. Tax Court,
San Diego, California.

Henry David Thoreau’s refusal to pay his poll taxes, which would have
supported the U.S.
invasion of Mexico, earned him a night in jail in
1846. Today, tax resistance is once again
becoming a lively philosophical issue. The best-known recent convert is Jane
Hart, wife of Michigan Senator Philip Hart, who announced last month that
she “cannot contribute one more dollar to purchase more bombs.”

The Government claims that the war tax protest amounts to very little loss
of actual revenue, citing the fact that the number of income tax protesters
in 1971 was up only 92 from the year before. The
resisters argue that, like Thoreau, they are fighting for a matter of
principle. They also take a modest pride in the fact that their harassment
has forced the
IRS to
assign someone at each major center to the task of “Viet Nam Protest
Coordinator.”

It’s interesting that the
IRS
claimed to be able to count the number of war tax resisters. They don’t do
that anymore, and I wonder what methodology they used at the time. Just
counting the letters of protest or the people who claimed a “war tax credit”
on their returns?

New England puritans had on occasion persecuted Quakers during colonial times,
even executing some for the crime of being Quakers. Cooke hoped to find that
the puritans of Lynn hadn’t been quite so monstrous, so he asked Samuel Boice,
a local Quaker, to search the records of Quaker sufferings.

“So far as it relates to military fines, we think that, if this were all that
the Friends paid for their defense from Indian wars, so rife in those days,
they were let off easy; for then the military work was no children’s play.”

We requested Mr. Boice, consulting the records of the society of Friends, to
furnish us in detail all the instances in which that society suffered any
thing like persecution from ours. And he has done it. But we give in a
condensed form the results of the list which he has furnished. We intended
to spread out all the details; but the work has filled so much more space
than we had expected, that we have crowded out not a little of our own
material that we intended to insert. All the ends of the publication of this
list will be answered by this condensation of the facts.

It does not appear that any acts of persecution took place, except that of
distraint of goods, and fines for refusing military service. Most of the
cases of distraint of goods are dated in the latter part of Mr. [Jeremiah]
Shepard’s ministry. None of them bear date earlier than
1697, and none later than
1717. So they all come
within the space of twenty years. A small
portion of them were for military fines; the rest to support the ministry,
and pay expenses on the meeting house. The aggregate sum of the value of all
goods distrained for those purposes through those twenty years is one hundred
and twelve pounds eighteen shillings. The instances specified of persons
having goods distrained are fifty-three; but the number must somewhat exceed
this, as in some cases et ceteras are put down. Such
is the substance of the paper referred to.

The explanation of the causes of that action, so far as it concerns the
support of the ministry, we have given in full. So far as it relates to
military fines, we think that, if this were all that the Friends paid for
their defense from Indian wars, so rife in those days, they were let off
easy; for then the military work was no children’s play. To this their
reply would be, that the non-resistant principles of the Quakers were their
defense. This is a matter of mere assumption and much question, to say the
least. But if it were so touching Quakers living in separate communities,
where their non-resistant principles could be known to the Indians, and the
Romish priests who guided their operations, and who would be sure to hate
them none the less for their Quakerism, it could not be so with Quakers
living in communities with the Puritans undistinguished. If the settlement
in Lynn, as it then stood, had come under a sudden assault and massacre by
the Indians, by what process could the tomahawk have distinguished and
passed by the Quaker families? And this community of exposure to the
tomahawk by a promiscuous residence with the Puritans, chosen by the Quakers
against the desire of the others, was a fact for which only themselves were
responsible. They had chosen a residence where all were exposed to a common
danger, but were not forced to go forth in person for wars of defense; and
it was no hardship that, to so small an extent, their money was taken for
the common purposes, any more than it now is that they pay taxes to the
common purposes of government, one of which purposes is that of national
military defense. In other words, the principle on which military fines
were collected from Quakers then was the same as that on which Quakers now
pay taxes to the government; and this is not regarded as a matter of
persecution.

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